Kidman and Owen are about to appear on HBO’s “Hemmingway & Gelhourn”. Martha Gelhourn was a war correspondent who fell in love with a married Ernest Hemmingway. The two went on to have a tumultuous four-year affair.

Here are some clips from the interview:

Nicole Kidman:

On whether or not her mother supported her career:

“She always believed in me, but she’s tough on me too. She’s lived a life where she made a lot of compromises. She would have loved to be a doctor, but she didn’t come from the generation of women where she could go and be a doctor. She became a nurse instead. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a nurse, but she wanted to be a doctor. Until I won the Academy Award [for The Hours], I was kind of pursuing things to please her. I’ve really tried to sever that.”

On whether she has the toughness in her life of Gellhorn:

“My husband [country singer Keith Urban] says I’m raw. He thinks the world is not a great place for me because he fears that I’ll be hurt. He says, ‘That’s my job: I’ll protect you.'”

What attracted her to the role of playing Martha Gellhorn:

I knew nothing about Martha, but I’ve always been drawn to unique women who are willing to take on the world. The exciting thing about this film is that you see her discovering her nature. At the beginning, she’s a lot of talk. She knows that she’s either got to get her hands dirty and become what she pretends to be or she’s a fraud. In the end, Gellhorn out-Hemingways Hemingway.

On being comfortable getting nude on film:

I don’t mind being naked. Maybe as I get older, and now after having had a baby, it might be different, but I enjoy not letting my issues get in the way of a performance. Once I start putting all my little insecurities in my mind, I’m not actually acting. Then it’s about me—and it should never be about me. It should be about the character.

On the intense sex scenes in ‘Hemmingway & Gellhorn':

The sex was very important in that relationship because that’s the way she cuts Hemingway off. When Gellhorn says, “I don’t like sex,” it’s her way of saying, “I’m not based in sexuality; Hemingway didn’t have power over me. That’s not where I came from.”

Having said that, the sexual attraction between them was powerful. I kept asking Phil Kaufman, the director, “Is all this sex ­important for the story?” I wanted to make sure he wasn’t just getting off. But these were two people who could make love when a building was falling down around them. They had passion.

Clive Owen:

On whether he acted as a child:

“I played the Artful Dodger in Oliver! when I was about 13. It was the musical version. I didn’t sing that well, but I gave it a go. I was just given the part, thrown into it, and I came out and said, “I have to do this. I’ve got to be an actor.”

On meeting his wife, Sarah-Jane Fenton, while acting in a play:

“After drama school I did a seven-month tour of Europe performing in Romeo and Juliet. I played Romeo. I was at the first rehearsal, thinking, I wonder what Juliet is going to be like, and she came in. She had a corduroy jacket on and was carrying a pile of secondhand books, and her glasses were falling off. I kind of fell in love at that moment.”

On his instant chemistry with his wife:

“When we did the big balcony scene, I always thought we had this amazing connection. Much later, she admitted to me she couldn’t even see me because she’s so shortsighted, and she didn’t wear her glasses onstage [laughs]. At the time, I didn’t think it would be a great idea if Romeo and Juliet got together, so we didn’t do anything about our relationship until halfway through the run. We finally got together in Belfast, and now we have two daughters.”

On whether or not he prefers filming sex scenes – or scenes where he’s dying:

“It’s much harder to do a death scene. You’ve got to do it convincingly, and it’s a huge thing to die [laughs]. Sex scenes are only hard if there’s no narrative conveyed through the sex scene. In the Hemingway film, the sex scenes have a story going through them. It’s part of who these people are and what they are.”